A silver halide photographic light-sensitive material (hereinafter also called a light-sensitive material or photographic material), after being imagewise exposed, is processed in the procedure comprising steps of developing, desilvering, washing and stabilizing. A black-and-white developer solution or color developer solution is used for the developing processed; a bleaching solution, bleach-fix solution or fixer solution is used for the desilvering; city water or ion-exchanged water is used for the washing; and a stabilizer solution is used for the stabilizing. Each processing solution is kept at a temperature of 30.degree. to 40.degree. C., and a light-sensitive material is dipped and processed in the solution.
The processing is usually conducted in an automatic processor (hereinafter also called an autoprocessor) by threading a light-sensitive material in sequence through its baths filled with the above-mentioned solutions. In this instance, in order to keep the processing solution's activity in each bath constant, the autoprocessor conventionally employs replenishing systems to supply appropriate replenisher solutions to these bath solutions. To be concrete, the process progresses with these replenisher solutions being supplied from time to time from the respective replenisher tanks to the processing baths. In the above processing system, the replenisher solution to be stored in a replenisher tank is usually prepared in another place and at need supplied to the replenisher tank. The preparation of the replenisher solution, however, is conventionally made according to the following manual method:
Processing chemicals for silver halide photographic light-sensitive materials (hereinafter also called photographic processing chemicals) are conventionally available in either in a powdery form or in a concentrated liquid form to the user and, for use, in the case of powdery form, is dissolved in a specified amount of water to prepare a developer solution. The concentrated liquid form is mixed and diluted in a given amount of water to make a working developer solution. PA1 In a light-sensitive material processing method having a process comprising a fixing capacity-having processing solution bath and a processing bath subsequent thereto, wherein part of or the whole of the overflow from the processing bath subsequent to the fixing capacity-having bath is allowed to flow into the fixing capacity-having bath, and solid photographic processing chemicals are added to the fixing capacity-having processing solution bath or the overflow from the processing bath subsequent thereto.
In recent years there have been strong demands for protection of environment and resource saving mostly in and North America. In the photographic field, plastic containers for the foregoing concentrated processing liquid are in serious question; the plastic container for photographic processing chemicals is inexpensive, very convenient for storage and transport and excellent in the chemical resistance, but, when emptied, is buried, discarded or incinerated as an industrial waste. However, the plastic container is almost indecomposable and, when incinerated, emits a vast amount of carbon dioxide, which is a cause of the global warming issue. In addition, a problem on the side of autoprocessor operators occurs before the pile of such plastic containers in the workshop makes its narrow space still narrower.
As a solution to the above problems there have been various proposals; for example, JP O.P.I. No. 11032/1983 discloses a technique of microcapsulation of developer constituents; JP O.P.I. Nos. 109042/1990, 109043/1990, 39735/1991 and 39739/1991 disclose methods of using granulated photographic processing chemicals; and JP O.P.I. No. 61873/1976 discloses collapsing agent-containing photographic processing chemicals tablets. The above methods, however, tend to leave insoluble matter which causes clogging trouble with the filters inside the baths of the autoprocessor or which attaches to the light-sensitive material being processed to adversely affect its processing characteristics. Further, the tabletted processing chemicals described in the above publication comprise color developer and bleach-fix which are each of the type available in kits of chemicals parts, and has the disadvantage that the use of these tablets requires a dissolution with stirring in a replenisher tank provided therefor; the dissolution takes time and an erroneous dissolution may possibly occur. Accordingly, the inventors, in order to prevent such an erroneous dissolution, made an attempt to transform the chemicals into tablets of a single mixture of the chemicals, but the obtained tablets were poor in the solubility as well as in the preservability.
On the other hand, as a method requiring no dissolution work JP O.P.I. No. 11344/1991 discloses a technique for providing prepared chemicals by having pasty chemicals in necessary amounts corresponding to a mixing ratio extruded from their respective containers and having the extruded chemicals mixed and diluted to a specified concentration. This technique surely requires little or no dissolution work, but requires equipment such as a device for extruding chemicals, nozzle, supplier and the like, and also the strict maintenance thereof, and thus imposes a heavy burden on the operator responsible for it. Further, the technique has the disadvantage that the processing chemicals used therefor are poor in stability.
In photographic processing, reducing the processing liquid waste is strongly called for from the economical and environmental pollution point of view. Conventionally, as means to solve this problem there are conventionally known methods such as, for example, a method of making the washing bath into a multistage countercurrent water flow system; and a method of providing a preliminary washing bath immediately after the fixing bath to have the light-sensitive material being processed rinsed therein to thereby decrease pollutants which could be brought into the washing process by being contained in or attaching to the light-sensitive material. JP O.P.I. Nos. 14834/1983, 3448/1983, 235133/1986 and 212935/1988 describe methods of conducting a stabilization treatment upon completion of desilvering instead of washing, and methods of having the stabilizer bath overflow into a fixing bath, the bath precedent thereto. These methods are surely effective to some extent in reducing using amount of washing water or in reducing the amount of the waste by directly using a stabilizer solution, but because the replenishment of the processing solution is made with a liquid replenisher, reducing the amount of a replenisher causes degradation of the resulting photographic image preservability and an increase in stain, and therefore reducing the amount of the waste liquid has its limits. Further, as a technique to reduce the amount of the waste processing solution from the automatic processor a method for recovering wash water by using an ion-exchanging resin or a reverse osmosis device is disclosed in JP O.P.I. No. 52140/1988. However, in the above method there is a limit to reducing the amount of the waste liquid because of the limit to the recovering rate of wash water. In addition, it has the problem that providing the above-mentioned equipment in and around the washing bath makes the autoprocessor costly.
Further, JP O.P.I. No. 282460/1991 discloses a technique powdery-type processing chemicals are automatically supplied to an overflow from the preceding processing bath. In this method there is no problem of preservability in the powdery chemicals supplied, but it is difficult for the automatic supplier described in the above publication to accurately weigh out a prescribed amount of the powdery chemicals and to adequately protect the chemicals from moisture, so that it is almost impossible to always automatically stably supply the powdery chemicals.